Donald Trump To Send Lieutenants To Pakistan With This Message

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to depart for Pakistan late this month (Reuters)

WASHINGTON:

HIGHLIGHTS

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to visit Pakistan this month

He will be followed by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis

US has accused Pakistan of harbouring terror groups

President Donald Trump will dispatch his top diplomatic and military advisors to Pakistan in the coming weeks, turning up the heat on a nuclear-armed ally accused of harbouring terror groups.

Weeks after Trump angrily accused Islamabad of providing safe haven to "agents of chaos," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to depart for Pakistan late this month.

He will be followed by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, according to US and Pakistani sources.

The one-two punch is designed to drill home Trump's message that Pakistani state support for terrorist groups has to end, according to officials briefed on the visits.

Washington has long been frustrated by Pakistan's willingness to offer cross-border safe havens to Taliban factions and other terrorist groups fighting US troops and their Afghan allies.

The relationship reached the breaking point in 2011, when president Barack Obama sent commandos into Pakistan in 2011 to kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who was living in a military garrison town.

With little change since then, Trump came to office indicating that Washington's frustration had reached the point where something had to give.

"We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting," he said an August address.

But in the six weeks since Trump signalled that tougher tone, there have been precious few signs that the calculus in South Asia has changed.

Mattis told Congress this week that he will try "one more time" to "see if we can make this work."

'Not acceptable'

"To this point, we have not seen any impact on military-to military-relations," said one Pentagon official, suggesting any change would not happen after Mattis' visit.